Susan Gregg Gilmore is the author of the novels The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, and The Funeral Dress. She has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. Born in Nashville, she lives in Tennessee with her husband.
“Each fully developed character has a role to play in this moving and unusual novel, a homespun Pilgrim's Progress set at a dairy farm on Big Sugar River in East Tennessee in 1961. When twelve-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, a chain of miraculous and catastrophic events is set in motion, inevitable as the dire judgment of the local Primitive Baptist Church. Leonard's rigid, God-fearing mother, June; his secret-bearing father, Emmett; Leonard's best friend, Azalea, and her troubled mother, Rose, the local whore, are only the protagonists in a story played out by the entire community. Gilmore knows how to move the suspenseful events right along to its brilliant and moving conclusion. A big, generous novel, a really good read.”—Lee Smith, The Last Girls and Silver Alert “The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush is a call to readers to stop what they’re doing and read! Humorous, heartfelt, and sometimes harrowing, Susan Gregg Gilmore introduces us to a compelling cast of characters and a community built on a system of give-and-take. At the center of it all is young Leonard, his early loss a transforming lesson to everyone around him.”—Jill McCorkle, Old Crimes and Life After Life